15 Jan 2015

In a bid to better the quality of local soccer, the Botswana Premier League (BPL) has come up with several initiatives, the most controversial being to flood stadia with attractive ladies so that men will follow on their trail.

“The more women we attract to our matches, the more men will come to meet those women, either way, the numbers will increase,” said BPL CEO Bennett Mamelodi on Wednesday January 14.

He said the BPL will assist clubs with designing of programmes that will attract women to their fold.

This “ladies night” approach by the BPL is now facing the wrath of Gender activists who despise the use of women to attract men.

Cumulatively, they say, women are now being paraded as tools for the pleasure of the eye instead of direct participants in sport.

International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG) Secretary General, Game Mothibi said while they appreciate the fact that the local league wants to attract more women to the football matches, a problem arises when they are only meant to attract the opposite sex.

“That in itself sounds degrading and demeaning to us women,” she said.

 “As IWG we encourage women participation in sport, therefore we believe those who go to the stadium go there to watch the sport they love, rather than attract anybody,” she said.

Gender Links Botswana coordinator, Gomolemo Rasesigo labelled what BPL intends to do as very wrong.

“Honestly they can’t be saying they are going to use women to attract men at the football matches, women should not be perceived or portrayed as marketing instruments,” she said

Mrs Rasesigo said the initiative is shocking and uninformed because women already attend games in large numbers, not to attract or find men, but because they enjoy the sport.

This is in consonance with what the Botswana Netball Association president Tebogo Lebotse Sebego believes.

She said netball, a ladies only sport, attracts spectators across all genders to the game, primarily because of their athleticism and good display of netball.

“We would not want to position our game as male attraction, or anything less than the players’ ability to play netball,” she said.

The initiative, akin to a stag party in all respects, has always been a cause for concern in marketing circles across the globe.

According to a scholarly journal of The Ethical Dilemma of Advertisements, such techniques as usage of sex and emotional appeal are always controversial enough to grab attention and in the process increase the viewer’s interest.

The journal says many researches have studied sex appeal and its effect on advertising.

“Almost all of them indeed proved that they do grab attention regardless of all the other different variables, such as age, gender or cultural background,” reads part of the journal. ENDS